Earth Island News

International Marine Mammal Project

UK – An attempt to secure new whale-safe sanctuaries in the Atlantic and
Pacific oceans foundered during the July 2001 meeting of the
International Whaling Commission (IWC) as Japan and its pro-hunt allies
(Norway and Iceland, plus six Caribbean nations) voted to defeat the
plan. Twenty countries voted to create a South Pacific whale sanctuary
while 19 countries supported creation of a South Atlantic sanctuary.
The Pacific sanctuary would have protected the breeding waters of 11
species of great whales. The US delegation voted in favor of creating
both sanctuaries.

Japan’s rampant vote-buying exploded on the floor of the IWC on
July 23, during a debate on the “undue interference or coercion” of
weak countries by powerful ones. New Zealand skewered Japan in a
scathing statement by Minister of Conservation Sandra Lee. Japan’s
Deputy Commissioner Masayuki Komatsu (who recently made the
incriminating admissions of Japan’s vote-buying practices) angrily
claimed that “the statement of New Zealand is full of lies,” but he
failed to name any.

Japan’s use of tens of millions of dollars of development aid to
buy the votes of poor countries such as St. Vincent, St. Lucia,
Grenada, Antigua, Dominica, St. Kitts and Solomon Islands was the
target of a resolution on transparency sponsored by New Zealand, Italy,
US, the UK, Australia, Netherlands, Mexico and Argentina.

“We recently received the transcript of an interview with a
prominent member of the Japanese delegation,” Conservation Minister Lee
charged. “During that interview it was stated that there is ‘nothing
wrong’ with his country using its Official Development Assistance
Program ’in order to get appreciation of Japan’s position’ on whaling
issues.’

“My Prime Minister and government view the proposition of
vote-buying as outrageous and have publicly said so. Taking advantage
of the poverty or vulnerability of developing countries and small
island states to buy their votes can only be regarded as a serious
misuse of power and influence by a wealthy nation.“

“For many years, the IWC struggled to justify itself to the
outside world because of its lack of transparency,” Lee stated. “But
all these attempts to increase transparency are made a mockery if
sovereign governments lose the very thing that makes them sovereign – the right to make their own decisions, without undue influence of other
states.

“It is disappointing that Japan is using such tactics,” Lee
concluded. “My government is sincerely disturbed, therefore, by conduct
and comment that argues that such tactics are legitimate and
appropriate.”